Conventional portable vault designs have traditionally been constrained by their key requirements: robust resistance to destruction and manageable weight. In the current technology, materials used in making safes have been selected to prioritize the main function of a safe, its capacity to maintain physical integrity. The material selection decisions have been made as a function of minimizing the cost of the manufacturing. Nonetheless, in order to ensure sufficient physical protection, a typical safe requires an abundance of the critical protection material. The quantity requirements have caused challenges in producing high-performance safes in a cost-effective manner.
One of the most prevalent techniques of the existing safe manufacturing technology has been combining steel with concrete. In some instances, steel rods have been embedded in concrete, and in other examples ribs of steel have been used as a supporting structure for pouring cement for it to solidify into concrete. However, the amount of a high-density material such as concrete has been proportional to the desired mechanical properties of the safe. As a result, concrete safes with have resilience have been excessively heavy, and this drawback has diminished their portability and their overall logistical manageability.
With the advancements in the polymer technologies, new components have been available to be used for a proper balance between mechanical properties and weight. Nonetheless, the conventional polymer materials, if simply used in combination with steel, have not shown satisfactory performance against thermal challenges such as torching, for example.
In light of the counteracting properties that are desirable in a safe all at the same time, such as mechanical resistance, thermal and ballistic resistance, manageable weight and low manufacturing cost, a novel material is required that achieves an optimal balance among these mutually opposed characteristics.